my Photopost is dying: vb albums getting traction

[Alfa1]

Photopost Pro is far superior to vbulletin albums. It has many more functions and tbh vb albums is a very poor excuse for an image gallery. It doesn't even have categories.

Yet on my big board with 135.000 active accounts, my Photopost installation is dying. In the last month I received 16 new submissions. Its getting less and less. vb albums however are getting ever more traction: 500 new submissions in the last month. At the rate its going now, it is starting to make sense to just disable Photopost.

I think the main issue is the lack of integration. I know there are a few addons for vb4 that Chuck made. I am using vb3.8 and will never use vb4, as vb4 is as good as dead now that vb5 is announced.

What is missing:
- notifications in vbulletin.
- new images blocks for vbadvanced.


Notifications can be resolved with the addon vbSocial notifications, if they get temporary access to a photopost installation and database to work in.
There is no vbadvanced module for photopost that I know of.


I'm not sure if many other sites have the same problem.

[Chuck S]

There are several issues here alot which have to do with misconceptions and misconfiguration.

Here is your main issue though. Why do you have vb albums active? If your using PhotoPost you should have from the beginning disabled vb album thing as that would prevent users from using that so you force them to use photopost.

vb3 is a dead product which is another issue. vb4 which has been the staple for years now has an awesome integration which I made and has plenty of integrated aspects. Since vb4 came out and killed vb3 no other development has been done in a dead development product.

vb4 is far from dead. It is only on version 4.21. It is the product line you are running which is done with and has been for sometime now. They have come out with a handful of security released over the past 3 years since vb4 has been out about 3 years now.

vbadvanced is a vb addon so nothing we integrate with. There are various random photo blocks you can check out in the mod forum but I can not tell you what will or will not work as that is not a product I have ever used on my site when I used vb3. I used vbPortal way back then.

http://www.photopost.com/forum/photo...age-block.html

[Alfa1]

Random photo blocks have no value in the discovery of new content.

I have vb albums active, because Photopost does not have this vb profile functionality. My members wanted their personal albums on their profile.
I would gladly disable vb albums when photopost can offer an integrated experience including profile albums, notifications, new photos in activity stream and new photo widgets. I know you have already created the latter which is great. I hope you will offer the rest for vb5. Especially as vb5 comes with expanded image gallery functions.

vb4 has been in repairs for 3 years and only since 4.2 I would consider it a viable product. There were thousands of bugs. I would upgrade to 4.2.1, if vb5 would not be around the corner. All vb4 development has been halted as the devs are all on the vb5 project now.
vb3 is still being used by a lot of sites.
But vb4 vs vb3 may be a matter of opinion. Pretty soon they are both dead. vb5 is not far away and will be released before 4.2.1 which has been pending for quite some time.

[Chuck S]

I can not offer you advise on your opinions about vbulletin and there products. I know lots of vb customers did not want to try vb4. My experience with it though has been alot more positive than the vb3 code branch which had far more severe bugs. Alot of vb4 bugs where style issues because of the new templating.

vb4 is far from dead though. They are not going to stop development at 4.21 that is a fact look at there site. 4.2 was just released in the spring and there have been two security releases since there. vb3 however is dead and has been for years which is why no new development was ever done between our product and that code branch. The functionality you want between our gallery and vbulletin has been there for years now just in the vb4 branch of code which is there active code branch.

We can not do all the new integration stuff with a product line that has been dead for 3 years. Once we get access to vb5 when a beta comes out we will obviously make sure vb5 has all the great integration features vb4 enjoys.